to-do list

14 Jun 2018 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

A small thing that made all the difference

A few months ago, to my utter surprise, I finished ALL my weekly goals and got my daily to-dos done without much striving.

Do you know what the difference was?

I worked from home 3 times that week and left my diary and goals notebook open on my desk all the time.

How is that a big deal, you ask?

I agree!

I didn’t think it was a big deal either but clearly it is.

Seeing my goals and to-dos visible on a daily basis without having to open notebooks and take them from my bag or box on my other desk made the difference.

I generally pack up and clear everything all the time which means I’m not reminded unless I consciously open the notebook and look at the page.

The reason I don’t do it all the time is that our nanny is in and out of my study, and when Dion works from home, he lets the kids into the study (I don’t let them play in here – this is a workspace).

I’ve since thought of a solution. I can simply ask the nanny to sweep and mop on one day every week and not go into the study on the other days.

That way, I can leave my stuff open and visible without privacy concerns.

I shared this story with you because you may not be getting to your goals just because you’re forgetting them.

A tech-y way to do the same is to take a picture and save it as your lock screen on your phone. Change this every week/ month. Or type into your notes and save the notes screenshot as your lock screen.

There are ways to keep our goals visible and front-of-mind; we just have to be a bit intentional.

Has this helped give you ideas?

How do you remember your weekly goals?

Filed Under: Decluttering, Goals, I love stationery, Intentional living, Personal, Planning, Time management, Workplace Wednesday Tagged With: desk, office, to-do list, weekly goals

22 Mar 2018 by Marcia Francois 5 Comments

Let’s talk about my house’s to-do list

I’ve spoken before about how my house has its own to-do list. It was a very popular post actually – either my readers are curious or having a house to-do list is unusual?

Here’s that post I wrote nearly a year ago

I thought it was time for a little update.

When I was approaching the end of 2017, I looked over the list and realized we were moving SUPER slowly in closing those gaps.

I asked myself one question – what will make me feel really happy that is also fairly easy to execute on?

1.The answer was my floors. We didn’t have enough money saved to do everything I wanted, so we installed laminate flooring in our 3 small rooms and it was the best decision ever.

I love my floors. If you follow my OrganisingQueen Instagram feed, you’ll see my floors in many of the bullet journal or planner background pics.

I chose the colour, had to pay a bit more because they only had the more expensive wood in stock and I wanted it done within days, not in six weeks’ time. Worth it! This is how I roll – I take a bit of time to decide to do something, but then I want it done yesterday 🙂

I flew to Cape Town on business for two days and my floors were installed while I was away.

2. And then we’re currently in the process of painting three rooms upstairs – my study and Connor’s room are both complete, and the pyjama lounge’s ceiling has been primed for painting… white!

I’ll share photos on Instagram and Instagram stories once it’s completely done next weekend.

As I write, the rooms are a mess (and I’m taking the3 opportunity to quietly dispose of junk) but I love how clean and fresh everything feels.

3. The other thing I really want to get done is to sell some furniture, especially my Oregon pine kitchen table and chairs. I still love it but it is about 30 cm too long for the space so it’s been in the pool room while I bought this new table. That is going on my to-do list for autumn along with my search for the perfect armchair for our pyjama lounge.

I actually bought one last year, it wasn’t right for the space, and I had about 3 weeks of “pain” trying to return it and get refunded, so I’m a teensy bit scarred by that experience.

If you see a good reading chair around, do let me know!

Tell me about your house to-do list.

What’s on it, what have you managed to get off the list, and what are you currently looking for?

(I will keep an eye out for you too).

PS the very bright side of a slow-moving to-do list is that I checked our bond statement the other day and we’re now paying about 50% more than our minimum payment, and if we only just continue at this rate, we’ll cut off 5.5 years of our bond. Yay! My goal is still 8 years 🙂

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: contentment, floors, house to-do list, paint, to-do list

20 Nov 2017 by Marcia Francois 2 Comments

3 kinds of lists for your bullet journal

Do you know what I’m really excited about these days? It’s how bullet journalling has made it cool and trendy to write things down 🙂

When you write things down, it frees your mind for more big picture thinking and you don’t have to worry too much about the details because they’re written down so they’re not disappearing anywhere.

Here are 3 types of lists you could use to help manage your time effectively. You can make the lists in your bullet journal or download them from my website.

Master to-do list

1. Master list
This is a place for a “brain dump”, a place for ideas you might want to pursue in the future or possible projects you need to tackle.

You can work off one master list for months, like I do with my business or blogging ideas.

I also have a master list of things to do in the house. I write up a new list every year and I work on that list the entire year.

To-do list

2. To-do list
This list can be monthly, weekly or daily. I post a weekend to-do list to Instagram every weekend.

The difference between this list and the master list is that this one has a time deadline attached to it.

I have a monthly to-do list, which is really my monthly goals list. I keep this one with broad goals like go to the gym 8 – 12 times, a weekly to-do list with about 3-5 business tasks to get done and then my daily to-do list which spreads out those 5 tasks so that I have only 1 or so to do daily.

Sometimes 1 task is very big and takes a couple of days so I’ll leave a couple of smaller ones to do all on one day.

I want to caution you to only put a maximum of 6 items on your daily to-do list so you don’t become overwhelmed!

My checklist to live my best life

3. Checklist
This is a place with a list of items which you check/ tick off.

This list is ideal for anything you need to do regularly, like the order in which you do your photo backups, a list of weekly business tasks, travel checklist, shopping list, etc.

My favourite checklist used to be my “newsletter” checklist which walked me through a process of ensuring I repurposed every bit of the content I create. These days, the one above is my favourite checklist 🙂

Once you start using the correct list for the task at hand, you’ll be flying!

You can download a variety of lists in the free pack on my website.

Do you prefer to print out your lists or to write them into your bullet journal?

Filed Under: Freebies, I love stationery, Intentional living, My year of happy 2017, Personal, Planning, Time management Tagged With: Bullet Journal, checklist, lists, master list, planning, time management, to-do list

3 Aug 2011 by Marcia Francois 8 Comments

5 reasons why you must have a master to-do list

There’s something so powerful about a central place to store all of your ideas, thoughts and to-do items.

You don’t feel distracted and scattered because everything is in one place.

Whenever I start feeling overwhelmed, I make a master to-do list of everything I need AND want to do.

My current list contains things I have to sent out in the mail, business projects I want to work on, and documents I need to update, like some e-books and coaching tools.

So why a master to-do list?

What’s wrong with the back of an envelope and millions of post-it notes?

1. Writing it all down frees up your brain for big picture thinking so you don’t have to concern yourself with remembering details.

2. It eliminates all the bits and pieces of paper, post-it notes, backs of envelopes, etc.

3. There is something about the act of actually putting pen to paper that seals things in your mind. If you’ve ever been on one of my goal-setting workshops, you know exactly what I mean.

4. Once you see it in black and white, you can deal with reality so much better rather than imagining how bad it all is.

5. You can choose the exact number of tasks you want to tackle every day (I don’t recommend more than 6) without feeling overwhelmed. Move these 6 tasks to your daily to-do list.

My challenge to you

* Download my paper-based master to-do list from my website or use Outlook if you like the electronic version. The method doesn’t matter much; what does matter is that you have a central place to collect your tasks.

* First brain dump everything – go wild, you can sort it out later.

* Now, make categories and then start attacking that list.

Happy organising!

Over to you – do you use master to-do lists?

Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focussed action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full.

Visit http://purposefultimemanagement.com for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: master to-do list, overwhelm, time management, to-do list

7 Sep 2010 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

3 myths about lists :)

There are two types of people in this world – those who like lists and those who don’t.

This post is for those who don’t like lists 🙂

lists are boring

A list is only as boring as your imagination! You can and should put some fun things on there too as well as tasks to do.

I recently started putting things like “finish James Patterson book” on my weekend lists because all I was doing was chores. I loved the change so much that I now regularly put fun things like “phone _____ for a lovely, long chat” and “paint fingernails” on my lists just to jazz them up 😉

lists are a bind because they have tons of items on them

Well, that depends on the type of list. A master list and a checklist often do have tons of things on them but a daily to-do list really should have no more than about 6 items.

I’ve shared before how when I only have 6 items on my to-do list, I get through them all easily but when I try to be SuperWoman and add lots more, I get even less than 6 done! I showed a coaching client my diary once and she was amazed.

When you find the right list, your life will change

No, no, no! The list is only the tool.

I used to subscribe to tons of productivity sites and really, many of them were all about the perfect tool. A tool is exactly that – something to help you get something else done.

Many people are so intent on creating the perfect list or finding the perfect planner that they get into an analysis paralysis mentality.

Because when you’re obsessing about the perfect to-do list, you stop actually doing the things on the list, right?

The truth is it doesn’t matter what you use as long as you get it down somewhere – whether on a post-it note, in a gorgeous notebook or in your phone.

So how am I doing with my lists?

I still use a weekly list and take off up to 6 items (sometimes a lot less) to do in a day.

My new favourite thing is doing a mind-map list for my weekly planning. I do a spoke for each area of my life – husband, babies, house, work, business, health and fitness, etc. And then, off each spoke, I make new mini-branches with things I have to do.

Do you have any other beliefs about list-making?

Do you make lists? What works well for you?

P.S. There are some lovely lists (standard ones and mind maps) waiting for you in the free Organising Success Pack

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: lists, master list, mind maps, planning, to-do list